How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival c...an ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him... who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death,... a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves ... and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,...And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,That thus so cleanly I myself can free.Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,And when we meet at any time againBe it not seen in either of our browsThat we one jot of former love retain;Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,And Innocence is closing up his eyes,Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,From death to life, thou might'st him yet recover.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I was continuing to shrink. To become, what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being, or was I the man of the future?...... So close, the infinitesimal and the infinite, but suddenly I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man's conception, not nature's, and I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away and in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation--it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest--I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist.Even athletes need to sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

When much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources... of God who thus sends a real person to outgo our ideal; when he has, moreover, become an object of thought, and, whilst his character retains all its unconscious effect, is converted in the mind into solid and sweet wisdom,--it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »